Sidonia no Kishi episode 3: Mission Failure

Well, while I expected for the mission to go wrong, I didn’t expect such great failure on their part. It was rather obvious that things wouldn’t just work as planned, but at the same time, it is rather extreme how much was lost in the operation. The best pilots and best squad was exterminated in a single mission. There goes the moral of everyone in Sidonia. I will talk a bit more about all the cool stuff that are on the way for the show, but first I wish to address something that bothered me a bit in the direction of the episode.

Because of the CG, all characters look vaguely similar. We were introduced to 5 more characters this episode and it got me confused really quickly as to who was who. The weird non-linear beginning of the episode, coupled with new characters and battle inside similar looking mecha made it near impossible to fully understand what was going on during the Gravity Festival. It took me about half the episode to fully understand who were the 4 elite pilots and to recognize them…and at that point they all died anyways. Overall the first half of the show was really difficult to watch and unenjoyable, but this was made up for in the second half of the episode.

How stupid is it that the whole mission was compromised because of stupid whiny Momose. If they had just sacrificed the girl they would have managed to kill the Gauna and save everyone, but of course Akai decided to sacrifice himself and ruin the whole mission to save his girlfriend. I have a girlfriend, I understand what love can do to a man, but I would expect train soldier to know better than to jeopardize a whole mission for something like this. Look at what they accomplish by losing their cool, now everyone is dead, what a great sacrifice you did there. It seems like either the military school isn’t doing its job, or the best squad out there was simply not that great in the face of a stronger opponent. Either way, someone fucked up and now it is everyone in Sidonia that will pay the price for it.

Just with the preview for next episode it is made rather obvious that the Gauna will make a mess of their space station and I’m pretty sure that more than the 4 full fledged pilot will lose their life in this attack. Things have escalated rather quickly, from one failed operation to the next, it seems that just a single Gauna might be the demise of the last of humanity. It obviously won’t be the case since we have a lot more episode to go, but it remains interesting to see just how frail humanity has become in this apocalyptic future. I find excessively entertaining to see humanity fight for survival in such harsh and hopeless situations. It shows both our ability to adapt and our inherent vulnerability that we seem to forget in our every day life. This show is a prime example of the survival of the fittest and I love it.